Davy's Motto.
The pretty little homestead—or as it is called in Cornwall, the 'town-place'—of Varfel, (or Barfell as it was sometimes spelt) in Ludgvan, lies on a southern slope, about two and a half miles N.E. of Penzance, and is a somewhat less distance from St. Michael's Mount, a view of which, as well as of the famous Mount's Bay and of the Lizard district, it commands. Varfel seems to have belonged from an early period to the Davy family, some of whose monuments in Ludgvan Church are nearly 300 years old. Either here, on the 'paternal acres,' or in the town of Penzance, on 17th December, 1778, at 5 a.m., was born to 'Carver' Robert Davy (so called from his proficiency in his trade as a wood-carver and gilder) and his wife Grace Millett, their eldest son,[101] who was destined to emerge from this remote and obscure corner of England, and become President of the Royal Society—a man of science so distinguished that Brande, in his celebrated 'History of Chemistry,' spoke of Davy's death as nothing less than 'a serious national calamity.'
The district of Penwith, with its wild furze-clad granite moors, its rugged cliffs, and emerald bays, proved
'Fit nurse for a poetic child;'
and the imaginative faculties of the future illustrious chemist were not nursed in vain. Like Pope, he 'lisped in numbers,' reciting, when only five years old, his own rhymes at some Christmas gambols; and his poetic vein never left him, even in the laboratory or in the lecture-room, compelling the aristocratic idlers of London to love Science, because, as they were constrained to confess, under his magic guidance, Science was made beautiful, and was attired by the Graces. It was said by Coleridge that had Davy not devoted himself to Science, he would have shone with the highest lustre as a poet; and the following youthful lines, full of true local colour, certainly show, as indeed did his whole life, that he had drunk of 'the fount of Helicon:'
'TO THE LAND'S END.
'On the Sea
The sunbeams tremble; and the purple light
Illumes the dark Bolerium, seat of Storms!
Drear are his granite wilds, his schistine rocks
Encircled by the wave, where to the gale
The haggard cormorant shrieks; and, far beyond,
Where the great ocean mingles with the sky,
Behold the cloud-like islands[102] grey in mist.'
It was this poetic temperament, derived (as his brother, Dr. Davy, thinks) from their grandmother, which induced the gifted Dr. Henry, F.R.S., thus to refer to the subject of this memoir: